Just in case you didn't know...

There are only four days until Christmas day! Um, also in case you didn't know, that's sort of really soon! The sad part is it still feels... not as Christmassy as it should.
However. On the bright side, today I got to shadow Becky Henry at Bulloch Drug. She's a compound pharmacy technician, so she mixes the creams and capsules. It really was so much fun! Next semester (cross your fingers) I'm going to take a math class, Medical Terminology, and Chem 1010 as pre-requisites for the Pharmacy Tech program that I want to take next fall. Neat eh?

I finally downloaded all the pictures from my camera so we should probably stick some of those on here, right?


Riley's being stalked/mauled by my sisters... :)



Kaitlyn sent me to time out once. We re-enacted it in Mickey D's on our fry run! :p



Kait giggled. Quite a bit.



"Chub", "Chunky", and "Fat name yet to be determined". We've got awesome name skills eh? Plus poor Kassie has an abscess that she almost had to get surgery for so she could still breathe and was on lots of drugs at the time of this picture. Haha which is rather obvious. ;)



Frank Sinatra (yeah, she's a girl. We just didn't know that when we named her. :p) makes a really grand scarf type accessory. Don't you agree?



Marissa. With "her boy". As usual. :p



I love this cute sister of mine!



A super coolio van that we saw when we went on our roommate trip to Salt Lake. (To be explained later.)



Best bumper sticker I've ever seen! I want one. :p




For the record, I love this bed...



and the mint that my cute Aunt Sharla left on the pillow! :)



This is the first of many random pictures from the drive to SLC...










Sami's tiki man! Handsome devil, he is.





"RED ONE!!!!" (Sam and I then had a cat/girl slappy fight over who saw the bug first. We're really mature.)




Random side of the road picture. :)




Sami driving... enthusiastically! :D




Sometimes Steven our neighbor boy gets abused by Tori my roommate. But honest to goodness, folks, he asked her to. Boys. I'll never understand them.



I HAVE THE TANGLED SONGS!!!!! (Thanks Caitlan!)





My friend from CHS, Emily Nakken, came to visit me last Monday!




Torrence (AKA Tori) hid in my closet, "Shannon! I have a surprise for you!" I go back there, "HIHIHIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" (Torrence's war cry) Sami's giggling uncontrollably on her bed, Tor comes after me with Sam's rope, wraps it around me and then shoves me over so I fall on the ground. There is love in our apartment. :p



Woo Woo! Hooray for Snow College Basketball games to get us out of the apartment! :)




Tor and Me before the game. :) We had to be pretty. Her man was there. ;)




Remember when I said you'd never see our garbage cans clean and empty again in your life?? This picture was taken (literally) eight hours after cleaning checks. Oi.




Sometimes we have adventures for our shoes. This is the water park edition.




You can always tell when it's cleaning checks at Snow Gardens because this happens. A bajillion people finally take out their trash haha.




Duct Tape. Saving the world, one job at a time.





On occasion Jayson comes over to visit, flops on the bed for five seconds and is out. Then he mumbles something about Shannon should go eat fruit flies. Yeah. Working graveyards at Wal-Mart isn't so great for him. :p





So. Where to begin. I haven't blogged for a while huh. That's probably because on Thursday all of my roommates and I packed up and drove to Salt Lake. Our objective? Christmas shopping, Roommate Christmas dinner, and most importantly walking around Temple Square to look at the lights. Sami and I decided we wanted to stay overnight and so my Aunt Sharla was awesome and let us stay at her house in Lindon. (She's a cute hostess. We loved it! :D) We ended up taking three separate cars, which seems pretty silly but it worked. Jill drove her car because she wanted to leave for home right after. Alisha drove because she and Tori and Karlee had to be in Ephraim Friday morning. So we parked Sam's car in Riverton and all got in Lish's. There was an accident on the freeway by Draper, so we were in stand still traffic for an hour at least. This old grandma woman swerved off the road at one point and tried to cut us off after going off the white line. Lisha wouldn't let her though, and the cute sweet grandma figure of a woman mouthed all sorts of angry obscenities at us. Quite frankly, my dears, it was hilarious. Sooo not what we expected from a little old woman. But let me tell you, age does not destroy spunk!
We went to Olive Garden first for the dinner, where Karlee and Jill informed us that it's tradition to flirt with the waitor. Poor Houstin. We had lots of problems. Jill stared at him like a creeper, I asked for numbers when he asked if he could get us anything else, Lisha asked for a picture, Tori and Sami giggled, and Karlee was flirtatious to a fault. ;) It was kinda funny. This was the first time I've been to Olive Garden though, and I give it two thumbs up. If you've got some extra money to spend. Which none of us did. Happy holidays.
The Gateway= stop numero deux. For the love of garbage and all other things that are holy... I hate shopping I think. The first ten minutes were fun. Then I just wanted to get the stuff and get out of there! Lisha is rather indecisive I think because we sat in Buckle for a looooong time. And this rather... happy seeming man was asking all sorts of questions and trying to find outfits for her. So. Long story short, we missed the lights.
Then we went home. The end. :p
I packed as soon as we got back and hit the road to get to Cedar home! (I missed my house and my family lots more than I thought I did. I wasn't planning on coming home until Sunday evening.)
Brianne didn't know I was coming home, and so I rang the doorbell. Mom answered, "Bri, it's for you!" She comes up the stairs and around the corner, which was my cue. "Surprise!" :) She gave me a much needed big hug! I love those a little bit of a lot.

Which brings me to my "I'm thankful for..." moment.

I feel like I'm always super redundant. But... Ok so I have no justifications for my redundancy. I went to the American school of redundancy school I guess. ;)

This Christmas season has been different in so many ways. I wasn't at home with my family for most of it, the tree in my apartment was tiny and had funny lights on it, I didn't have a fire place to drink hot chocolate by (and I didn't even drink that much hot chocolate this year), and all sorts of other physical/superficial ways. This year I've spent a lot of time around the sweet spirits (not referring to that one song. :p) in the Nursing home and it's been mostly after Thanksgiving and before Christmas. Therefore this Christmas season. :p
I've learned so much from each of them, and I've come to love them all so much! I'm not sure how I feel about that, because a couple of them are in their 90's. I'm kind of scared to get too attached. But I decided it's like that song from Wicked "For Good". There's something that's touched my life in different ways from each individual. The opportunity for service has made me so much happier and made me think a lot more about Christ's service to us, and the service Joseph and Mary did for Jesus. It still doesn't feel like the typical "I'm so excited for Christmas that I can't sleep for the week before" kind of Christmas spirit. But I've felt so much love and warmth this year. This year might be my favorite Christmas yet! I'm so thankful for family. (Again. :) ) I'm thankful for soft comfortable beds that I get to sleep in at my Cedar home. :p I'm thankful for small blessings like having snow fall right off of the road, but having the road stay dry while I have a white knuckle drive back to Cedar City, or like smiles from friends and random strangers. I'm thankful for perspective. I'm thankful for everything! :) Haha that's a shortcut so I don't bore you all to death. :p


Merry Christmas in four days!!! :D